![]() ![]() The characters are in their 20s, having just made it through the Depression. We witness a lot of drinking, smoking, and late-night jazz listening. In “Rules,” readers have no trouble believing in dinner at the 21 Club, watching the early morning runarounds at Belmont, living in a terraced apartment at the Beresford. (In America, wit and sparingly applied cunning ease things along.) ![]() In “Rules of Civility,” it is Katherine Kontent, a bright, young stenographer in New York City, who, during the course of 1938, advances both her social standing and her professional career through astute decision-making. (And luckily, he has sequestered a few gold pieces that come in handy.) His classical education and moral rectitude see him through. In “A Gentleman in Moscow, the figure is a count whom the Soviets place under a kind of “house-arrest” in the Metropol Hotel from which vantage point he witnesses the development of his homeland from 1920 to 1960. ![]() ![]() Each deals with an historical period, focusing on issues of class and deportment, embedding a protagonist in a carefully recreated setting and time frame. This is certainly the case for me with “Rules of Civility,” by Amor Towles, whose second novel, the run-away best seller “A Gentleman in Moscow,” is significantly more entertaining than the first. Sometimes it is best to read an author’s books in the order they are written. ![]()
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